In Like a Lion, Out Like a Lamb

This popular proverb about March suggests that this month’s weather usually starts fierce as a lion but ends soft as a lamb.

There is, however, a different interpretation: the constellation Leo (the lion), rises in the east at the beginning of March. Thus, the month “comes in like a lion,” while the constellation of Aries (the ram), sets in the west at the end of the month, and hence, the month “will go out like a lamb.”  

I also like to think of it in terms of “actions and consequences”: if you work hard at the beginning of the month, fiercely executing your business strategy and resisting temptations, then you can relax at month’s end, enjoying the fruits of your labor.

My column last month made this point very clear: “sooner or later, we all sit down to a banquet of consequences.”  The distilled spirits industry is experiencing this firsthand, but distillers are not the only ones: wholesale distributors are also facing the banquet of consequences, in the form of contractions, receivership and disastrous brand exodus.

But every disaster and every vacancy creates a vacuum that is invariably filled in by someone or something else.  If the incoming players are smart, they will come in like Leos, unafraid to tame the herd and to impose new law and order, knowing that the new paradigm will, in time, allow them to relax and enjoy the rewards from their hard work.

“The brown buds thicken on the trees,

Unbound, the free streams sing,

As March leads forth across the leas

The wild and windy spring.”

–Elizabeth Akers Allen (1832–1911)

March is upon us, and it will inevitably lead us to April.  How we get there, however, is completely up to us.

Cheers!

Luis Ayala, Editor and Publisher

http://www.linkedin.com/in/rumconsultant